Alec Veil
Alec Veil is the founder and CEO of Veil Nanoscience. He started the company with Donald Miller and Hope Bradenburg who were co-workers at CBALtech from 1992-1997. Early Life Alec Veil was born on January 17, 1957 in San Francisco, California. His mother, who was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania had moved to San Francisco to be with Alec's father who was stationed at The Presidio army base. He was accepted into Stanford at the age of 17 and quickly entered their master's program in neural engineering. By 20, Alec has advanced degrees in neural engineering as well as computer science. In 1981, he received his PhD from Stanford in Neural Engineering. Presidio Institute of Technology (1981-1992) For the next eleven years, Alec was a professor and also chaired the Neural Engineering department. In 1992, Alec received a job offer from CBALtech, a research company in Princeton, New Jersey. The same year, his parents also moved east to Cherry Hill, New Jersey. CBALtech (1992-1997) Alec moved to Princeton to take the Director of Research position at CBALtech. While at that time the company focused on the healthcare sector, Alec focused on other, more experimental projects, such as brain-computer interfaces and memory research. However, Alec and his boss, Joseph Silva, never quite saw eye-to-eye on where the line should be drawn in such experimental projects. Alec, who believed that he was close to a breakthrough discovery that could help the world, was unable to continue due to pressure from his boss. In 1997, Alec resigned from the company on good terms with Joseph Silva. Veil Nanoscience (1997-Present) With the freedom to pursue his new technology, Alec recruited two of his research employees from CBALtech, asking Hope Bradenburg and Donald Miller to join him as director of research and chief financial officer, respectively. Dispute with Joseph Silva However, Alec needed the research he started at CBALtech to be able to continue working on it on his own. Due to a contractual agreement, all of the research was legal property of CBALtech since it was completed with their equipment and on their time. This led to the Veil-Silva Letters, a series of letters between Alec Veil and Joseph Silva detailing Alec's request for the contract that kept the research in the hands of CBALtech to be waived. Silva denied the request. Small Projects Without the research, Veil Nanoscience started on smaller projects, such as creating nanotubes for solar cells, RFID chips, and other nanotechnology. This continued until 2000. Accident In the summer of 2000, several years after initially denying the request, Joseph Silva suddenly changed his mind and invited Alec to meet him in Princeton to discuss the exchange. Silva told Alec to tell no one. In response, Alec agreed to keep it quiet. To avoid suspicion, he told friends and co-workers that he was taking a short vacation to visit his parents in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. When the the Veil family landed in Atlantic City International Airport on October 9, 2000, a chain of events began that would change Alec's life forever. Albert Mansfield Albert Mansfield was a low-level employee at CBALtech from 1999-2001. With the company faltering due to increased competition from Veil Nanoscience, Joseph Silva hatched a plan to save his company. Convinving Albert Mansfield that the only way to save his job was to help enact the plan, Silva convinced Mansfield to follow Alec out of the airport and up the Garden State Parkway towards Princeton. Mansfield, concerned that the entire family was with him, received the go-ahead anyway after contacting Silva. When they reached Exit-77, Mansfield did what he was told. Silva needed Veil Nanoscience out of the picture. He refused to give up the research, and in turn, saw CBALtech falter due to the increased competition with Veil Nanoscience. Exit-77 Mansfield caused an accident, pushing Veil off the road, across a median that held the Exit-77 sign, and into a tree. However, Alec was unharmed. His wife was killed instantly and his daughter, Jane Veil suffered a brutal head injury. She was in a coma for just over three months, and when she woke, she was found to have suffered from severe retrograde amnesia. Alec grew increasingly frustrated by Jane's lack of memory as well as his wife's death. He took a lot of blame for it, knowing that it was his desire to get his research back from CBALtech was the reason they were there. Veil Resignation Bay Area Recovery Center Shortly after Jane Veil awoke from her coma, she was sent to Bay Area Recovery Center, a neurorehabilitation facility. Alec was asked to no longer visit due to his short temper with his daughter and her caretakers. IRIS On the second anniversary of the accident, Alec came to the realization that Joseph Silva could be behind the accident. He came up with a plan that he believed would make everything right. He hired an underground group called IRIS to help him put the plan into action. He needed his daughter and his research. IRIS got both, taking Jane Veil from Bay Area Recovery Center and stealing his old research back from CBALtech, destroying the rest of their data in the process, avenging the death of his wife and the injury of his daughter. Experiments on Jane Alec, now having his daughter and his research, began working on a new memory chip, programmed with his daughters old memories of him. During the 7th experiment, Alec made a mistake, and his daughter went into a coma for 14 hours. She woke for a brief moment, but within seconds, she died from a brain aneurism. Blackmail In 2005, Hope Bradenburg and Donald Miller grew tired of watching their company fail without Alec in charge. When they went to visit Alec at his home, the two became more and more aware that Alec was hiding something. Eventually, they pressured Alec, who trusted them completely, to come clean. However, Hope and Donald didn't accept the admittance. They used it against him. Fearful of losing their positions at Veil Nanoscience due to its decline, they blackmailed Alec into returning to the company with research in hand. Miller and Bradenburg forced Alec to have Veil Nanoscience agree to a defense contract with the CIA, using his research to create memory implants (using Chip-77) the CIA could use in foreign covert operations. A special operations unit known as Acephali would carry out the missions.